as we forgive (those who trespass against us)
by fortheweightofus
Summary: Solitary confinement. One within a cell, the other within a body. Takes place between First Class and DOFP.


Charles hasn't cried since October.

He was lying on the sand, head resting in Moira's lap, when he tried to rise and could not.

He remembers grit in his eyes and Hank's fur against his cheek; he remembers being carried away and _screaming_ as his body was jostled, feeling like someone was separating each individual vertebrae of his spine.

He remembers the way he gripped the coarse fabric of Hank's tracksuit, as though it were that single action that tethered him to earth. The world around him was a swirl of heat and bright light and panicked voices reverberating in his mind and ears, and Charles had cried and screamed like he hadn't since he was a child, because he was dying and because he wouldn't get another chance to.

_(and because he was hoping someone would hear)_

Somewhere between unconsciousness, a starch white Cuban hospital room, two panic attacks, and a single tear shed by Hank, Charles became paralyzed.

That was October. It's December now.

Two months of physical therapy and Hank as his personal chauffeur, of smiles a tad too bright to be convincing and the offer of emotional counseling and Alex's quiet, desperate pleas to indulge in a therapy session, of Sean's nightly calls home that Charles can hear though the boy tries to speak softly, whispered conversations that promise of homecoming and family and all the things that Charles doesn't have anymore.

Charles has Hank and Alex, and Sean for now. He has cavernous halls and more rooms than he knows what to do with, flights of stairs he can't climb, and two doors he will never open.

But the halls will not remain empty, and the haunted rooms will soon be brought back to life, because Charles has plans, and he has nothing if not hope.

Four months is not a long time, but Charles feels like it should be.

Four months since September, a year since December, and Charles Xavier had felt like a man renewed. He'd had stacks of papers to grade that made his hands ache enough to compensate for the lack in his legs, and oh, he'd had a _reason_, lectures to give that rid his voice of the hoarse quality it'd adopted since October of 1962. He had _students_, people who lived and breathed life into the stale air of his home, a smattering of stars across the darkness his eyes had grown accustomed to.

It's dying.

His dream, his only purpose, is crumbling in his hands.

Alex left a week ago. His eyes had been grimmer than usual. _Take care of him,_ he'd whispered to Hank as they embraced, as Hank blinked back tears and curled his hands into Alex's shirt. _Promise you'll take care of him._

Hank had. Hank is. Hank does his very best.

He, Charles, and two other instructors remain, teaching three or four courses each to compensate for their lack of staff. Each day, another parent arrives with nervous eyes and twitching hands, and takes a child away. They look at him as though he is unstable, untrustworthy, and Charles can't blame them, maybe he is. Maybe they're only rational to take the students away, because it's clear to everyone that Charles cannot even take care of himself. He is confined to his chair, and thinner than he's been in years, and people hear the whispers of a new mutant threat, see how utterly helpless he is, and take their children where they can be safe.

Charles throws up his breakfast twice in one week. Once, it's in front of the children, and that's when he knows he's lost. Tiny hands stroke his back and soft voices inquire after his health and all he can think of is his Raven, small and blue and smiling, and how he's never been able to save anyone at all.

It's 1969, and Charles can't do this anymore.

Seven years since Cuba, six since Erik Lehnsherr killed the president.

Silence so complete years cannot encompass it.

(_Charles Xavier fell in love exactly once in his life. _

_ Once was enough. Once was more than enough._)

Charles still has his halls, and his empty rooms, and the stairs that he longs to throw himself down. He has his skeleton of a home. He has nobody to fill it.

Alex, Sean, gone. His meager staff, his handful of pupils, no more. Charles has Hank. He knows it is more than he deserves.

He's been lying in bed for what feels like years. Hank, blessed Hank, is out. Grocery shopping. Or something of the like.

Charles doesn't know. He doesn't care to know. He harbors a remarkable apathy toward the one person who has never let him down.

But that's not true. He loves Hank. He _loves_ him, blue fur, blue eyes, spectacles.

Though, he's not sure he knows how to love anymore. But he knows that should any demise befall Hank McCoy, he is done for.

The last beams of the days' sunlight filter through his dark curtains. It's October, again, and his room is drafty. Charles likes the chill. He drapes a woolen blanket over his shriveled legs, for the illusion of feeling.

He should've asked Hank to move him to his wheelchair before he left. Lying down is his least favorite position since paralysis. And dear Hank always manages to arrange him so that his body is dead center of the mattress. _For your safety_, the boy says earnestly. _So you won't fall_.

_ So you're trapped_, his mind helpfully supplies.

He's always trapped. Paralysis is a form of captivity.

Charles clenches his hands into fists by his sides. He can feel the frustration, the white hot desperation, rising in his throat.

He takes a deep breath. Heady emotions do no good. Emotions, in their entirety, are no good. He can't shoulder them. He doesn't have room anymore.

Hank has been gone at least an hour. That, in itself, is not unusual.

But _oh_, how the minutes stretch on as Charles lies unmoving, hardly breathing, a newly deceased corpse that can't remember how to live and never learned how to die. His knuckles are white, his fingernails digging into the skin on his palms. He should've asked to be moved, _goddammit_, there's a reason he can't stand to stay like this for too long, and it's because he starts _thinking_, remembering, reliving. The past is a weight, a real, physical weight that has long since crushed his heart and his legs, and now sits atop his chest, in anticipation of the collapse of his ribs and one last, weary exhalation.

He keeps a picture of Raven on his nightstand, placed there naught a week after he'd come home from Cuba. It's brown and faded, worn at the edges, from nights he'd clutched it to his heart, eyes burning with tears he'd refused to let fall. Hope kept them from falling. Hope told him they would meet again.

Hope kept alive in his mind a girl who no longer existed, and Life weathered her photograph.

Some nights he wants to knock the picture down. Wants to throw it to the floor, to watch the glass frame shatter, to cut his skin with its fragments. Raven's left her mark on her brother. He wants the scar to bleed. It's all he has left.

He doesn't have a single photograph of Erik.

If he ever did, he's long since burned it.

He wants reminders of his sister. He craves them. He keeps the damned picture (_she doesn't even look like that anymore_), he lives in their childhood home, he relishes in the fact that she's no longer with _him_, that she hasn't tried (_or at least, hasn't succeeded_) to release the monster that tore her away from her family, and he deludes himself that one day, soon, she will come home.

He doesn't want to remember Erik. For if he does, he will not be able to keep the cracked pieces of himself together.

Erik Lehnsherr was ripped from him like the bullet from Charles' spine. Torn away with bloodied hands, taking with him flesh and bone and a reason for breathing, and hope.

Charles mourns him as though he were dead. He hates himself for doing so.

He hates that he's lying in his bed, hates that Erik has spent the last 6 years in solitary confinement, and hates, most of all, that he cares. That the tiniest part of him, the smallest of voices, whispers: _you could save him. You could try. _

He doesn't try. He can't get up.

Charles feels a sob catch in his throat. He wants someone to save _him_, goddammit.

Charles done with rescuing. He'd tried that with Erik, tried to rewire a _human being_ like one would a faulty machine, and look where it's gotten him. Look what he's become. Look at them both.

Solitary confinement. One within a cell, the other within a body.

Erik is in prison, and Charles hates him for not being _here_.

The tears welling in his eyes are spilling over. Oh god, if Erik were here... if _anyone_ were here, if someone would just hold his _hand_...

"Help me," Charles whispers, bile burning in his throat. Then, because no one is around to hear, he screams, "_HELP ME!_"

The sound of his voice tears through the quiet air, startling him so much he flinches. He waits, breathing harsh and heavy, for a reply. A minute passes and a laugh bubbles from his lips, tinged with a note of madness that he can't ignore. It terrifies him.

He screams again.

Nobody answers, nobody _will_, and Charles bangs his fists into the mattress with a dull thud, shaking from head to...waist. His hands are clammy, his face tear streaked, but his legs are still as ever.

Charles sobs in earnest. He can't help it.

He tears at his useless legs, nails digging deep into pale flesh, leaving angry red scars that do nothing to ease his rage, because he's bleeding and he deserves to be bleeding but he can't fucking _feel_ it. He screams and screams, slamming his skull back into the wooden headboard, reaching his hands up to fist in his hair, tearing it away from his scalp in clumps. He thrashes uselessly, screams and sobs and begs for all the good it does him, bleeds on his bedsheets and cries for _Erik_, Erik, Raven, _please_...

"I can't," he sobs, burying his face in blood encrusted hands. "_Erik_...I can't, I can't _do_ this anymore..."

"Charles!" someone yells, and he hears a thud like something dropped to the floor; he doesn't open his eyes but distantly he knows Hank is back, knows it's time to duct tape himself back together, but he _can't; _he thrashes against the calming hand on his arm and continues to cry, heaving from the force of all his emotion, doubled over his hated legs and gasping for breath.

Hank is trying to reason with him, trying to hold him still, but Charles is having none of it. He flings out a hand, feels it connect with flesh, and throws himself backward, head striking the bedframe with a resounding crack.

He feels like vomiting. He can't breathe and he still hasn't opened his eyes; he slaps a hand over his face to hide himself from Hank, to hide the utter _mess_ he has become.

Hank is still talking. Charles doesn't care what he has to say.

"Leave," he manages to choke. "_Leave_, before I destroy you too."

He doesn't know if Hank responds. He opens his eyes, just in time to catch a glimpse of Hank's jacket as he evacuates the room.

Charles stops, staring at the door frame. He inhales a shuddering breath, wrapping his arms around himself, and stops thrashing, stops scratching; he simply hugs himself tightly, and cries.

"_Erik_," Charles whispers to no one. "_Erik_. I love you. I _love_ you, _damn_ you... Come back, you have to come back... _help me_."

He contemplates smothering himself in the bedclothes.

Then suddenly, Hank reappears in the doorway. Hank, who came _back_, and it doesn't register, because no one who leaves ever comes back again.

But Hank has, and he kneels besides Charles, wrapping his shoulders in another blanket and nudging a glass of cool water against his lips.

"Hank," he cries softly, looking at the boy but addressing every ghost in the room. "Hank, I think they've left me. And I don't know _why_."

Hank is crying. Or rather, he would be, if he weren't trying so very hard to be strong for Charles' sake. Charles can feel the quivering of his mind from here.

"Neither do I," Hank says quietly, smoothing Charles' disheveled hair back from his face. Charles waits for him to go on, waits for the stumbling, clumsy attempts at comfort from a boy who knows how everything works except for people.

But Hank doesn't go on speaking; he simply tugs the blanket tighter over Charles' shoulders, and watches him with a strange expression that Charles hasn't seen directed at himself in years.

If it weren't for the fact that such an idea is impossible, Charles would have called it love.

He's calmer now. He's breathing. Hank gently takes Charles' small, pale hand and holds it between both of his own. Neither speaks. Neither needs to.

_There's no hope in this room_, Charles notices. There's none. The sun is sinking outside his window, and he sits surrounded by blankets and ghosts and he feels Hank giving up on him more and more by the second. But the boy makes no move to leave. Indeed, the thought never crosses his mind. The press of Hank's mind against Charles' is solemn but resolute, and permanent. In his thoughts, Hank whispers promises of not leaving.

There is no hope, but there is this. Charles knows it's more than he deserves.


End file.
